Just want to come in here and share my opinion. I cannot say anything about TH as I only played it last time in 2014, but I can say that I owned LOTR two times.

First time I bought it, I really disliked it. Very easy skillshot, every shot was fairly easy to make, but you need to repeat everything a gazillion times to get to the end. Ultimately that is the same for every pin, but I just found LOTR boring. So much so that every time I got on Path of the Dead I just wanted to walk away. Just did not want to see the pathetic bounce onto the Arwen plastic or prepare for 50 minutes of balltime. Also I could not play it with friends because they are all fairly ok players, so everyone had to wait VERY long on its turn.

I sold the first and kept on reading everywhere how great LOTR was, just like I read here now, so when I got the chance to buy a real HUO I took a chance and bought it thinking that I would maybe two years later see what was so great.

Long story short: I really did not like it at all so sold it after two weeks.

This is not a hate story for LOTR, just another sound to let the OP know that not everyone can get into LOTR and that there are disadvantages about the game. Actually I really wanted to like LOTR because I am a fan of Tolkien, but the click just was not there.